Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Animal 5th Birthday Party

I can't believe my son is FIVE!! I feel like I have been a mother for forever but at the same time these five years have gone by too fast! How does that work???? :)

If there is one thing people know about my son Talon it is that he L-O-V-E-S animals! He is always carrying one with him, he talks about them all day, watches his sister's princess movies "as long as they have cool animals" and he goes to bed with a different stuffed animal every night! :)

So when the time came to plan a little party I knew how easy it would be to please him ... do an animal party with his cousins!!! It couldn't have gone any better (unless every cousin could have been there!) We all went to the OC Zoo inside Irvine Regional Park. Talon goes there a LOT and knows every animal's name like "Billy Jean" the deer, etc. He was in heaven showing his cousins everything! Then we ended up back at our house for an "animal-themed" lunch! I thought I would share the party details if anyone is interested .... I got a few ideas from fellow bloggers and I will link up to them!

The Invite ...

I first saw Chalkboard Speech Bubbles when Positively Splendid did a giveaway ... I thought they were awesome and would work for so many things!

For the party we had everyone write their favorite animal on the chalkboard and I created this collage ... it actually turned out to be one of my favorite parts of the party and it will be fun to look back on this with Talon!

I also just wanted to share some of the decorations ....

I LOVE these frames from Ikea (I will be dedicating a whole post to them probably ... that's how much I love them!) I thought it would be a fun way to display with the food. Talon helped me come up with the signs with things like "Lion" Lemonade, "Panther" pizza, etc.

I love to check out Tip Junkie when I am planning parties ... it's such a great resource and I highly recommend it! My search for animal parties led me to this amazing safari party featured on GreyGrey Designs. If you check it out you will see I copied a few of her ideas that were too adorable to pass up:

Zebra Cakes

"Baboon Butter" ... and I used the recipe here (turned out way more tasty than I expected)

and her "Gorilla Grapes" (so simple put they look fun I think!)

I also made a lettuce salad (named after my parent's pet turtle, Lucky)

we had "panther pizza"

and "lion lemonade" too!

I couldn't resist buying animal crackers

For favors we bought a bunch of animals from a local dollar store, put two in a bag (with free passes to come back to the zoo). The note says "Thanks for coming to Talon's fifth birthday party! Come visit us at the zoo again!"

The only other activity (besides playing with a million animal toys and jumping on the tramp) was using foam animal stickers on this big roll of paper to create our own "zoo"

Isn't he a lucky boy to have so many cousins close by?

I love being his mommy!

Eating lunch under the tramp!

An example of his thank you notes

The party turned out so much fun and although I posted a million pictures I promise it was a pretty simple and fast preparation for this! If anyone is interested in using my invites, thank you, labels, etc ... let me know. It would be pretty fast to just change the names, info for you!!!

7 comments:

Chelsea, I LOVE LOVE LOVE this! As you know, Luke's birthday was yesterday and we're having a SAFARI themed party for him this Saturday! I'm going to steal some of these ideas and I'd love to use your thank yous! Thanks so much for posting this!

Really impressed with these pretty birthday celebrations. I am organizing a bridal shower for my best friend at one of the superb San Francisco venues next month. Thinking of yellow draping and matching flowers to highlight the venue. Hope her days are filled with happiness.

About SwellChel

I'm so blessed to be doing what I love and loving what I do! I'm the mommy to three sweet kids, and I'm married to my high school crush! I'm a stay-at-home mom but am a registered ultrasound technologist and college graduate in family history (interesting combination, isn't it?) Glad you're joining me as I share ideas, designs, crafts, recipes and more!